Grabbed by Their Lapels

OSCAR DE LA RENTA A billowing silk ball gown with an embroidered tulle top.Credit
Valerio Mezzanotti for The New York Times

New York designers have been harping on youth and playing Led Zeppelin, one of the funnier contradictions of Fashion Week. But rock ’n’ roll doesn’t make fashion relevant any more than putting bobby socks with stilettos does, although Oscar de la Renta did both.

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NARCISO RODRIGUEZ A bias-cut linen jacket over a silk top and trousers.Credit
Jennifer S. Altman for The New York Times

He had all the elements he needed in his clothes: in the airy skirts in marigold and emerald silk taffeta that opened his show on Tuesday; in gauzy bowed blouses that appeared with a silk knit suit; in a sweet, below-the-knee dress in white cotton voile and Battenberg lace. Lightness always gets the lead out.

Fashion Week always has a distorting effect on people’s perceptions, designers included. At first, the game seemed to be sports-influenced clothes. Then the action suddenly shifted to easy summer dresses, with run-amok prints and colors. On Tuesday, when Olivier Theyskens, the creative director of Theory, sent out linen and tweed jackets with jeans that could sit on your waist while riding your hips, everybody sat up and said, “Gee, that looks great.”

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THEYSKENS' THEORY One of Mr. Theyskens's jackets over a mesh top and jeans. Wickedly high patent platform pumps.Credit
Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times

This news was hardly hidden, though. Like the youthfulness of Mr. de la Renta’s ball skirts, it was right under our noses. The fact is, three dominant themes have emerged for spring, each of them reinvigorated: the sports garment (be it biker shorts or Michael Kors suede Bermudas or a floaty parachute skirt); the soft, below-the-knee dress (whether it’s a lean wisp of silk or a blousy Rodarte number), and a jacket. Mr. de la Renta showed a number of relaxed suits, but the blazer looks its newest over a dress or with pants or slim shorts.

The clearest, though by no means brainiest, articulation of the look was Mr. Theyskens’s lanky blazers and cardigans with skinny jeans that borrowed on the hip-hop style of letting your britches sink below your bottom. I remember seeing a similar technique of creating a high waistband with a hip belt and low back pockets in the 1990s from a designer raised in Detroit. Mr. Theyskens’s versions worked in their own right, along with the femmy tops and minidresses he showed both with hooker heels and combat boots. He also tossed in some neon metallic jeans, perhaps anticipating competitors who might have a similar style in the pipeline.

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SOPHIE THEALLET A draped one-shoulder silk dress with high side slit.Credit
Richard Termine for The New York Times

Narciso Rodriguez’s jackets had much more to offer. In fact, just about everything in the collection was well thought-out and worth having a closer look at. Sure, there were a few clunkers like wrapped tops that looked incomplete. But the things to notice were the linen jackets, with built-shoulders and slender sleeves and a bias-cut to give them a nice shape. They’d look great as an alternative to a cardigan, which we’re all getting sick of anyway.

Mr. Rodriguez’s other treat was long dresses, the simplest of which were in 1940s-style print silks with asymmetrical hems. Sheer dresses used geometric shapes, in shimmery white and pale green silk, as if he were designing his clothes to be worn in a modern glass tower. That’s a better idea than using a bunch of prints.

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MICHAEL KORS A hand-dyed poncho, lace-up boots and a cross-body bag.Credit
Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times

Sophie Theallet’s new dresses wrap around the body with a seductive ease, in jewel tones mixed with navy and frivolous pinks, and she played with transparency. In a solid show, she also threw blazers over dresses.

Given Mr. Kors’s penchant for travel themes — and I don’t mean Atlantic City — I should have known the dirt-brown poncho dresses and ripped sweaters with sandals were not inspired by Coachella. He went on safari! Silly me. But you could wear these clothes just about anyplace. It was indeed a different-drummer collection, and the clothes might look like mud on a rack, but the colors and knock-around shapes were warm and friendly.